Victor Sloan

Visual Arts

Victor Sloan is one of Ireland’s major visual artists. He was born in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone in Northern Ireland and now lives and works in Portadown, Co. Armagh.

He studied at Belfast and Leeds Colleges of Art. Victor Sloan is an influential artist and educator. He has developed an international reputation for creating powerful images, which display his prodigious versatility and inventiveness. He is known for his works commenting on various political, social and cultural aspects of Northern Ireland. As well as working with the medium of photography, he also uses video, etching and screen-printing.

In 2002 Victor Sloan was awarded an MBE. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts , an Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

He has exhibited widely throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia. His work is to be found in numerous important private and public collections worldwide. In 2001 the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast initiated a major retrospective exhibition, Victor Sloan: Selected Works 1980-2000, which was curated by Hugh Mulholland. In 2008, the exhibition History, Locality, Allegiance, curated by Peter Richards at the Golden Thread Gallery, Switch Room, Belfast, brought together a comprehensive selection of past works, with a particular focus on his video work.

Books about Victor Sloan and his work include Marking the North by Brian McAvera (1989), Victor Sloan: Selected Works by Aidan Dunne (2001), Victor Sloan: Walk, by Jürgen Schneider (2004) and Luxus by Glenn Patterson (2007).

In Ireland and the UK his work is included in public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; the Ulster Museum; the State Art Collection, Ireland; the National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland; the British Telecommunications, the Millennium New Media Collection; the Imperial War Museum, London and the National Media Museum, Bradford, England.

“Photographers usually take ‘what is there’ in front of them in the world; but what is there in Victor Sloan’s works is not totally given. What is there is paradoxically not there at all. He makes what is present find a gap to hide itself; empty spaces emerge, no longer solid or demanding. That is why his images become events in themselves and can significantly speak about a wider social condition.”

Jamshid Mirfenderesky, Ulster Art in the Eighties

“Over a sustained period Victor Sloan has produced a body of photographic work which deals with his own personal history in the context of a particular Northern Ireland community.
Although he has a full understanding of current photographic practice, he is not a slave to the medium. He is not is awe of its conventions and constantly ‘interferes’ with the images at the negative and print stages in realising his ideas.”

Declan McGonagle, Walls, Orchard Gallery.

Selected Honours:

1999 Elected Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts (RUA)
2002 Appointed Member of the British Empire (MBE)
2002 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
2003 Elected Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (FRPS)